Savage Savior (Savage People Book 3)

by Charleigh Rose

  I watched him through wide eyes, feeling my hold on the whiskey glass tightening until I heard the precious, expensive glass crack in my hand. That was when I put it down and took a deep breath. I told Graham over and over again I wasn’t going to purposely lose fights. It wasn’t the way I rolled. Not only because it was dishonest, but also because I hated losing. At anything.

  Especially at what I was so good at.

  “What the fuck does it have to do with Jade and the Italians?” I seethed. “They’ll be betting against me on purpose?”

  “No,” Graham said simply. “You’ll get in the cage with Stefano. They’ll get their pride back after we slaughtered them. We’ll get the dough.”

  I didn’t even realize what I was doing when I got up from my seat and tossed the tray with the whiskey and the glasses across the room. The whole thing smashed against a newly painted wall and crashed to the floor. I heard Dahlia shriek from the living room. She ran into the office a few seconds later, panting, her blue eyes full of horror.

  “What’s going on?” she cried out.

  “Nothing.” Graham was still seated at his executive chair, perfectly composed and giving zero fucks about the drama and my tantrum. “Get back to the living room, Dolly, and make a note to ask Cecilia to clean up this mess when she comes in tomorrow morning.”

  Dahlia flashed me one of her looks that showed me that she didn’t trust us, and I responded with blinking at her twice with a blank face, the international signal of ‘I don’t give a damn about what you think’. When she closed the door, Graham returned his gaze to me. I was standing up, still panting, and the more I thought about his insane proposition, the more I realized that it made sense, even though I didn’t want to do it.

  He wanted me to get beaten nearly to death by the man who tortured my girlfriend.

  Who did unspeakable things to her.

  Who kidnapped her.

  Who scarred her beautiful, delicate soul.

  Fuck the peace. Fuck the business opportunity and fuck the cash. I still had morals.

  “Graham,” I growled. “The answer is no, and next time you ask me, it’ll still be no, but I will take the fight just so I can finish the job and kill him this time. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Cole,” he retorted with the exact same tone I used, “you will take the fight, you will lose, you will get a nice, fat cut of the cash, and you will therefore make sure that Jade, and more important, Dahlia and my girls are safe from the fucking Italians. This isn’t a request. It’s an order. This is my army, boy, and you know full well what happens when a soldier disobeys.”

  They got killed. But Graham was full of bullshit if he thought I believed that I was just another one of his soldiers. We shared understanding, history, and mutual respect. He wouldn’t cut me off so suddenly.

  “Not taking the fight.” My jaw ticked, and I balled my fists. I prayed he wouldn’t ask me again because I wanted it so bad and wanted to fuck Stefano up. And I knew that doing that would definitely make Graham more than pissed off.

  “I’ll schedule it for next week.” Graham got back to the stack of papers underneath him. My mouth fell open.

  “Did you not listen to a word I’d just said?”

  “Go away, Cole. You’re making me want to fuck someone up, and it can’t be you, seeing as how you’re fighting next week.”

  I turned around and walked away, stalking out of his room and not even stopping to say goodbye to Dahlia. However, I did make sure that he heard me call him a ‘fucker’.

  He also heard how I slammed the door.

  And I heard how he laughed behind me.

  That goddamn Savage.

  “Please, don’t.” Jade twisted the collar of my shirt and kissed me deeply again. My mouth was sore from kissing her pretty mouth so many times, but it was the only thing that soothed me. I felt like I was going to explode when I arrived back to my apartment, and luckily, Jade was there to comfort me.

  Even more luckily, Carter wasn’t there to have a heart attack when he witnessed how we fucked on the sofa, right on his favorite seat where he watched CSI: Miami.

  “You know I can’t say no to Graham,” I growled, a feral sound escaping my mouth. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t really have much choice. I would get in the cage with Stefano. Whether I’d like it or not, these were just the codes of the world we lived in. However, I still hadn’t decided on the outcome of that fight. Was I going to lose for peace, or was I going to win for revenge?

  “Cole.” Jade nuzzled her nose into my neck and inhaled. “Stefano is dangerous.”

  I rolled my eyes and pushed her from me. I was sitting on the couch, and she was straddling me, her thighs clenching my waist in a death grip that was the beginning of a second round. “If you’re implying that there’s a chance for me to lose this fight unless it’s on purpose, then you better pack a pretty bag and get the fuck out of my sight.”

  I knew I was over the fucking top and then some, but everything about the situation drove me mad. And Jade knew me better than to think I was serious. She sighed and clasped my face in her tiny hands.

  “He doesn’t play fair,” she hissed.

  “I don’t play at all. I destroy,” I retorted, unblinking.

  “I’m scared for your life.”

  “You should be scared for his.”

  “If it comes down to you or him, I want the bastard to die,” she gritted out through gleaming eyes. I smiled.

  “Well, Butterfly, then I believe that he will.”

  Nothing felt the same when I entered the cage the night I fought Stefano. Nothing.

  For one thing, Jade had decided not to come. I understood it, for the most part. This was the guy who sexually and physically abused her, who kidnapped her and had every intention of killing her, her best friend and her two daughters. I was going to fight him now, and she was supposed to sit there and just watch us brawl?

  Second of all, I didn’t want her around all of these drunken Irish and Italian men anyway. The bar was buzzing with trouble that night, with Italians pouring in from the streets with red noses, thoroughly drunk and completely incoherent, and banged their fists against the wooden tables demanding the fight start two hours earlier. They pinched the butts of the waitresses and got into fistfights with some of the regulars. The Irish, in the meantime, were placing bet after bet on me. They shook their wallets and emptied their pockets, all of them sure that I was going to win easily.

  I was betraying my own.

  Betraying the men who came there every week to support me.

  Men who worked so goddamn hard for their money. They weren’t Graham Savage. They didn’t live in skyscrapers in Manhattan. They lived in the Bronx and Brooklyn. They were manual workers who had to consider the pros and cons of ordering another beer every time they walked in there.

  These were the men we were robbing.

  Graham Savage wasn’t my Robin Hood anymore.

  He was the motherfucking government.

  Even though guilt swirled in my gut, hot and angry, I still didn’t make up my mind. Not when Carter wrapped my hands silently and glanced behind his shoulder time after time again, wondering where the hell Jade was, and not when he gloved me and gave me one of his useless pep talks.

  No.

  I had decided I was going to win this fight when I saw Stefano waiting for me in the cage.

  He looked very well for someone who had been shot not too long ago. Strong, tall, pretty buff. Probably juiced up to the max, but this wasn’t the UFC or WWE. No one was going to test him for drugs.

  The judge was waiting inside the cage, and when I walked in the crowd screamed so loud I thought the whole building was going to collapse. My heart stuttered in my chest as I locked eyes with the man who had almost ruined everything I cared about.

  He hurt my baby.

  He was going to pay.

  We didn’t touch gloves—of course we didn’t. My eyes were on his when I heard the
abrupt whistle and the fight started.

  We shadowboxed for a few minutes, with me noticing Graham in my peripheral, standing next to the cage, eyeing me like he had a feeling I was going to fuck everything up. He was right to think that.

  Stefano tried to throw a few jabs my way, but they were futile. I was too fast for his own good.

  I countered his jabs with two smooth uppercuts, one to his chin and the other to his jaw. He stumbled backwards but didn’t fall. I heard him groan and watched him raise his gloved hands to touch where I hit him, but he withdrew his hands quickly from his face, like he had remembered something.

  I wondered what that was about.

  Graham’s face grew serious as I became more confident in the ring. A roundhouse kick to Stefano’s stomach sent him to splash against the net of the cage. The Irish cheered me on. The Italians booed at Stefano. Stefano tried to grab my foot when I went for another kick, but then I spun him around and dropped him to the floor, locking his head between my thighs in a perfect jiu-jitsu move.

  So far, it was an easy fight.

  Stefano was big and strong, but like most muscle guys, he didn’t know what to do with his strength. I knew my grip on Stefano was cutting his air supply, and I wondered when and if he would tap out. I hoped he was man enough not to tap out so I could kill him. It’d have made everything that happened worth my while.

  Graham was on the verge of yelling at me—I saw it by the way his whole face whitened and he kept trying to lock eyes with me, but I didn’t allow for that. I knew that if I’d look him in the eye, I’d chicken out on my plan.

  My plan to kill Stefano.

  A few minutes of me thigh-choking Stefano had passed before I realized what was happening. Stefano was fondling his gloved hands along my ankles before dragging them up to my knees, and the pain was sharp, hot, and blinding.

  I let go of him immediately when I noticed the rivers of red running from my legs to the canvas below us, the steady drip of my blood.

  Fuck.

  The fucker put blades in his gloves.

  I didn’t have much time to contemplate what to do. I just knew I needed to end this fight soon, but before I had the chance to get up, he struck me again with a punch straight to the face. I felt the razor slicing through my skin, deep, and groaned in pain, squeezing my eyes shut to avoid the sting of my blood against my eyeballs and stumbling to the net. I held it firmly while I wormed into a standing position.

  “You couldn’t let it go, could you?” Stefano barked at me, but I was the only one who was able to hear him, seeing as the crowd went ballistic around us. The Irish were beginning to suspect something was wrong with me losing so much blood, and the Italians were simply happy Stefano finally got his shit together.

  Even if he was cheating.

  “She’s fucking mine! Mine!” Stefano threw another jab my way. More blood. More cuts. Now I really wanted to kill the fucker as soon as possible, but I felt myself going under. I could barely breath. Barely stand up. I knew that I was going to pass the fuck out, soon. Fuck that shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I heard Carter shouting in the background and Graham’s voice, low and calm, contemplating what to do. They knew something was wrong, so at least I had that.

  Stefano’s glove clutched my neck in a grip, and that was when I really began to worry because I knew the blade was more than likely going to slit my throat. I was going to die there, in the cage, like an animal, like prey, like a dead beast.

  Without even knowing where to aim—at this point Stefano was nothing more than a shadow dancing in my milky vision, clouded by my losing blood—I managed to throw a few punches to move him away from me before I collapsed in a heap of muscle and blood.

  I heard shouting.

  I heard screams.

  Then I heard Jade crying and sobbing.

  I wanted to open my mouth, to tell her that everything was going to be okay, because I loved her enough to lie to her.

  I heard Graham on the phone, and he was pissed off.

  I heard Carter cursing with his weird Northern Irish accent and trying to comfort Jade, but she didn’t want to hear a word he said.

  Then I heard the most surprising thing I’d heard in a long while, and it came from Graham’s doctor who tended to all of us underground fighters and soldiers of The Savage Army.

  “Your cuts are nasty. You’ll need a lot of rest, but at least you won.”

  “I won?” I asked, my eyes still closed. They were too heavy for me to physically open them. Probably the morphine. The doctor confirmed with a mmm-mmm.

  “Knocked him out after he tried to choke you. Which is illegal in fights, even underground fights. You won by knockout in the second round, and Graham is about to kill someone because of the razor blade.”

  The last thing I told the doctor before I fell asleep was, “Tell him to wait. I’ll kill the bastard myself.”

  I didn’t want to face Cole after what happened because a part of me truly believed that it was all my fault. That I dragged the Savages and Dahl into all this mess. I was embarrassed and angry with myself all at the same time, but nothing felt as sharp and desperate as my need to comfort him and tend to him.

  Cole.

  We’d been together for so little time, our relationship built on sexual attraction and cat and mouse chases I thought were both adorable and juvenile. I didn’t expect to care so much. I didn’t expect to love so much. The feelings I had for him were unexpected and, yes, unwanted. He walked into my world and turned it upside down. I no longer wanted to move away to a different state. I no longer wanted to enroll into a college and study a subject I wasn’t even passionate about. I knew exactly what I was passionate about.

  Him. Only him.

  It was so small to admit it. So desperate and girly. But it was the truth. I didn’t care what I’d do for a living as long as I was around this man, the man who chased my monsters away.

  Like now, when I was sitting beside his bed at his apartment, on the floor, holding his hand and stroking his hair. His eyes were closed, and his expression was so peaceful that I knew he wasn’t hurting anymore. The cuts Stefano managed were fairly shallow after all, and other than the painkillers, Cole was doing well. So well, in fact, that he was eager to go back to training next week. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen.

  His eyes fluttered open, and I leaned forward, kissing his temple.

  “Jade,” he said, his voice hoarse with sleep. “You’re breathing on my face, and it’s annoying the fuck out of me. Can you go get me a drink of water?”

  I brought a water bottle to his lips and helped him take a cautious sip with a smile on my face, examining his handsome features. He really was my own personal Khal Drogo. I was the moon of his life, his sun and his stars, and he was my…savage beast, I guess.

  “Can you do me another favor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Suck my cock. Hard.”

  “What?”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes completely open now. “Suck it. I need to unwind before Graham gets here. He is going to be here tonight, and I need to release some of the tension for what I’m about to ask him.”

  I rolled on top of him and pressed my lips to his khakis. I could smell his cock through the fabric of his clothes. I could feel the hotness of his long shaft through his zipper. Even though Cole’s scent was generally musky and male, his cock had a twinge of something sweet. Every girl who loves sucking cock would know what I was talking about. It almost smelled like cotton candy that sat in the sun a bit too long. I absolutely loved that smell. I unzipped him and took his hard cock in my hand, licking my lips as I admired it. I wouldn’t ever get enough of sucking him off.

  “What are you going to ask him?” I asked. He patted my head.

  “Suck, and I’ll tell you.”

  I started sucking his dick, in and out, in and out, feeling it twitching in my mouth, feeling it hitting the back of my throat again and again. When his shaft thickened even more a
nd I knew he was going to come inside my mouth, he said, “I’m going to ask him if I can kill your ex-boyfriend.”

  I still didn’t want Cole responsible for killing anyone, but I recognized that he needed to do it. For me. For him. For us. I swallowed his release and kissed his juicy cock in response, replying in a small voice, “Thank you.”

  I knew Stefano was a sick bastard, but I never expected this.

  “What the feck is he watching?” Carter groaned from beside me. Both our backs were pressed against the brownstone of Stefano’s apartment building, and we had a good view of him through his glass window. He was sitting in his living room, all by himself, eating pasta and watching The Kardashians. Even though Carter wore a ski mask, just like I did, I could still see his face twisting in anger mixed with confusion.

  “You don’t wanna know, my Irish friend. You don’t wanna know.” I tapped his shoulder. He groaned, took out his silencer, and screwed it into his gun.

  “Just in case.” He squatted down to the ground, hiding behind a thick bush from the view, and I did the same. “If it doesn’t work the way you want it to.”

  “It’s going to work just fine. I’m going to kill him with my bare hands,” I said, giving Carter a serious look. The only thing we were waiting for was for fucking Stefano to turn off the lights. It was already one in the morning and no one else in his building was up. We had time to kill, but it was fine, since I hadn’t had a one-on-one with Carter in a long time. I’d missed my friend, but not enough from taking a break from Jade’s pussy and take him out for a drink.

  “How’s Quinn?” I asked Carter, and he looked away, as if I could see him blush through his mask. He was so stupid for that girl; it was almost endearing. They were so different a part of me wished they would hook up just so I could see how this shit unfolded.

  “She’s fine. Safe,” he clipped out. He was always curt when it came to her. I wondered what Quinn’s story was. Who she was running from and why did she need protection?